The Perl Monks Guide to the Monastery

Welcome to PerlMonks, the Monastery of Perl.
We hope your stay is long and enjoyable.
You are probably wondering what this is all about.
Hopefully this page will answer some of those questions.

PerlMonks is many things to many people, including:

A medium for making Perl as non-intimidating to learn and as easy to use as possible

A place for Perl programmers (such as you) to improve your skills and share your expertise

A community which allows everyone to grow and learn from everyone else

Finding Your Way Around

First, the Monastery has some repositories of information useful to the
Perl Monk, designed to help you get the most out of your experience here.
Second, we have a number of areas, called sections, where people can
post code, questions, and responses (known generically as "nodes") in a
threaded forum-like format.
As an adjunct to those sections, there are various views into the great
node repository which assist you in finding nodes of interest to you
— recently posted nodes, say, or meditations posted by a certain monk.
Finally, we have an assortment of pages not easily classifiable elsewhere.

Sections

Seekers of Perl Wisdom -
The place you can go when you have got a question on how to
do something or are unsure why something just isn't working.
Then other Perl Monks can offer you their wisdom and suggestions.

Meditations -
Have you found out something amazing about Perl which you
just need to share with everyone?
Have you had a Perl epiphany, or found something in Perl
which just blows your mind?
This is the place for those neat little tricks and amazing
discoveries.

PerlMonks Discussion -
For discussions relating specifically to this web site, and
how things work around here. For example, if you think the
Monastery could be improved in some particular way, raise
it for discussion here.

Categorized Questions and Answers -
Our own ever-growing compendium of "frequently asked"
Perl-related questions and their answers.
If you're faced with a problem and you think it might be common
enough that others have already solved it, then
check here before you go posting to Seekers of Perl Wisdom.

Tutorials - An ever-growing online textbook from which
you can learn the basics of Perl or some nifty stuff
you haven't tried before.
This area is managed by the Pedagogues.

Obfuscated code - Got code which would take a Perl
grand master to understand?
Post it here so we can stare at it in awe.

Cool Uses for Perl - This is the place to share or show off
your work of Perl prose. Posts can be of any size —
from the brilliant one-liner to the work-horse module to the
full-blown application program.

Reviews -
If you are shopping around for the Perl module
or book which is just right for your needs,
read these reviews — written by your fellow
Perl Monks — to help you make an informed decision.
Conversely, if you have used a module or read a book,
and you think other Perl Monks might benefit from your
experiences, please share them here by writing a review!

Perl News -
Timely news and announcements for, and from, the Perl Monks, and from the wider Perl community.

Find Interesting Nodes

The Monastery Gates -
The "default" page of the web site, it shows recent nodes
from all sections which have been deemed most worthy of
public exposure — the "face" of PerlMonks.

Super Search -
Full-text and title searches, with additional filtering
by section, age, author, and many other criteria.

Newest Nodes -
An up-to-the minute listing of all the nodes which
were created since "the last time you checked".

Recently Updated Home Nodes -
Similar to Newest Nodes, a listing of the user homenodes which
have been modified since "the last time you checked".
(Note that only changes designated by their authors as
"significant" will register in this list.)

Buy Stuff -
Yes, you can actually buy Perl and PerlMonks-related gear...
such as a t-shirt with the famous camel code obfu on it!

Snippets (deprecated) -
This was a place to show off clever, useful, short bits of code, such as one-liners.
As such, it was redundant with Cool Uses For Perl,
but it still makes an interesting read.

Code Catacombs (deprecated) -
This was intended as a place to post full-blown programs and modules.
As such, it was redundant with Cool Uses For Perl,
but much interesting and useful code can still be found there.

Craft (deprecated) -
This was a place for perlsmiths to showcase their code.
As such, it was redundant with Cool Uses For Perl,
but it still makes an interesting read.